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A global consortium of libraries has adopted the innovative TOTEM registry data model to address urgent issues surrounding the preservation of digital artefacts. The core challenge for digital archiving is to match potentially obsolete software that originally created artefacts — `complex' objects with sound and visuals as well as data information — with later computing platforms that can thus preserve them. The TOTEM project has effected major change in the technical specifications of preservation: its technical strategy for `emulation' enhances previous processes through which old files are `migrated'. End-users confirm that TOTEM has had significant cultural and technical impact on the preservation practices of national libraries including the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia, and US National Archives and Records Administration. Benefit to these organisations is technical, societal and economic, contributing to viable, long-term solutions in digital preservation policy.
This case study describes the impact of research undertaken by Falmouth's Autonomatic Research Group on developments in the UK Craft and Designer-Maker sector. This sector consists of individual or small groups of creative practitioners producing high value individual and bespoke products in studio/workshop environments using ceramic, glass, metals, textile and mixed media. This sector has been slow to benefit from the digital economy for reasons including cost, perceptions of relevance, accessibility and training. Autonomatic has worked to highlight digital technologies relevance to small scale and bespoke manufacturing, increase accessibility, and provide opportunities for businesses' and communities' creative development.
Research from the Digital arts strand of the CMR has had an impact in two related areas.
Robin Mansell's research has impacted on government policy and corporate strategy in the areas of copyright and the Internet, investment in broadband networks, and arrangements for achieving network security and individual privacy protection. These are all key components of what has come to be known as information society policy. Her work has challenged policy makers to respond to the legitimate interests of citizens as well as to those of government and corporate stakeholders. These impacts are particularly visible in shifts in information society policy at the international level to include greater attention to citizen interests and in national policy debates about the future of copyright and business and government responses to the need for secure networks that also protect citizens' privacy.
The research in this case study explored how media and cultural practices of communities are transforming in the digital age, and addressed the ways in which digital tools can enhance the lives of communities. There have been two main areas of impact: (1) contributing to the preservation, conservation and presentation of cultural heritage of communities; and (2) enhancing public and professional understanding of digital transformations in communities. The two main beneficiaries have been (i) local communities, and organisations working with and for communities in the South East of England, and (ii) professional communities of journalists and communicators in the UK and Germany.
Research at the University of Dundee providing original insights and new directions in the way that internet technologies and data can be embedded in the real world through being given physical forms has lead to impacts that include:
Since 1993, the outcomes of preservation management research at Loughborough University have:
This impact case study focuses on the effects of digital technologies on rural communities, including networks of inter-tribal relationships in Kenya. It emanates from a social model of user needs that, having transcultural applications, enabled rural communities across Kenya to document their suppressed histories, identify their community needs and become empowered agents in a process of peace and reconciliation. Parallel research on digital activism in rural and urban communities has helped citizens to understand their democratic place in a wider society in order to enhance their political participation. International policy-makers and campaigners in voluntary associations and NGOs have adopted the model.
The Scottish Ten is an ambitious five-year project using cutting edge technology to create exceptionally accurate digital models of Scotland's five UNESCO designated World Heritage Sites (WHS) and five other international heritage sites in order to better conserve and manage them. It has had global impact in terms of both its outputs and the process of research activity including forging intellectual and diplomatic links with our international partners, increasing access to digital surrogates of heritage sites, raising awareness of technological approaches to conservation of world heritage, and contributing to the policies of major heritage organisations across the world.